


Renegade

by TheAceApples



Series: Bitty!Clones AU [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: GFY, Hugo Award nominee, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Umbara, alternatively titled: 'i finally finished the umbara arc, and I have a lot of feelings, hardcase had adhd, like seriously right after like they were still on the planet, ngl i hope this hurts you. you specifically., time-travel, which are now YOUR problem'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14769767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAceApples/pseuds/TheAceApples
Summary: Noun: a person who deserts a party or cause for another.





	Renegade

**Author's Note:**

> special thank-yous to Norcumi and @faithfulbodyguard for both beta-ing and encouragement!

After an endless night of hell, Rex closes his eyes to the smoke and darkness on Umbara and opens them to the muffled snores of his sleeping pod on Kamino. ‘Less than pleased’ would be a Kenobi-level understatement on how he feels about the situation. Just one more blow when they’re already down, and it takes a moment for him to wrestle his fight-or-flight response into submission enough to think clearly.

In the stillness of the pod, undercut by the familiar hum and sway of Tipoca City, Rex comes to a decision and nods to himself. Whatever had happened to transport him from the Sithhell that’s been Umbara back into a cadet-pod on Kamino—whatever Force _shavit_ the Generals messed with this time, more likely—there’ll be work to do in the morning. Something to distract him.

There always is.

\- - -

The first day is… surreal, at best.

Scrambling out of his sleeping pod at the sound of the morning wake-up call, Rex nearly smashes his face in the gleaming white-tiled floor because his limbs are shorter than he expects. His hair is a riot of sleep-rumpled curls. The gnarled mass of scar-tissue on the ball of his right shoulder? Gone. Every brother's body is a roadmap of what he's experienced, and those two glaring landmarks put his own between its seventh and eighth Standard year.

A pretty bad year for every brother who makes it that far, to be honest—voice cracks and growing pains, constantly crawling out of your own skin and trying to stretch seven-minute showers into something you can _work_ with. Rex is _not_ looking forward to reliving it. If it is his seventh year, though, then that means…

Someone smacks into him from above, and Rex stumbles forward, automatically defensive until he hears the familiar morning grumbles of—“Snipe!”

Fresh-faced and so fripping _shiny,_  Snipe stands under the bright facility lights wearing his usual murderous morning glare. (Rex hasn't seen that glare since the morning they were shipped off to Geonosis. He was the only one out of 756 Squad to make it off that dustball.) Dent, their best hand-to-hand fighter and the only certified “morning person” in the squad, slides down the ladder right after him, humming an offensively chipper tune.

“Heard you fall out of your tube, Seven,” a voice says and Rex turns to find himself almost nose to nose with 756 Squad’s oldest, Lingo. “You got somewhere to be in a hurry?”

The rest of the squad snickers as they get themselves situated on the ground and Rex’s head spins. His batchmates, his very first brothers, alive and healthy, and slagging him off like a bunch of _di’kute,_  but what else was new. It's enough to snap him out of all the plans he'd made during the night and focus on the now.

And in the now, he has no Sith-fripped idea what Lingo is talking about. It’d taken until he was nearly eight to finally find his name, so being called “Seven” is situation normal, but he can't bring to mind anything else important that may have happened back then.

Until, that is, Byte claps Rex hard on the shoulder with a leering, “Don't worry, Seven, you've got plenty of time to primp before midday,” and Target finishes, “Not that Twenty-Two-Twenty-Four will notice.”

Rex blinks, surprised. _Cody?_ “Is that, uh, today?”

Lingo heaves a gusty sigh, pushing Byte out of the way, and swings an arm around Rex’s shoulders. “Bit of advice, little brother,” he says as he begins dragging Rex toward the ‘freshers, ignoring Rex’s protests that he is _literally only minutes older than the rest of them._  “When a commando destined for officer greatness agrees to give you some extra training, maybe don't waste his time and completely forget to show up?”

Oh, _sithspit,_  that’s right. He and Cody became friends only after Rex pestered him into teaching him skills that infantrymen weren't taught. Rex feels like running a hand through his hair at the realization. _Sithhells,_  had that really been back when they were seven? It felt like it’d been entire lifetimes ago.

The rest of his batchmates continue ribbing him as they wind their way down the corridors, race through their showers, and pull on their reds. They finally let the “faulty memory” and “ _second_ head-based deficiency” jokes die down once they hit the mess hall. It's just as he remembers: a sea of identical faces and uniforms, oldest companies already decked out in their whites.

Twenty minutes to gulp down their nutrient paste later, and 756 Squad fractures, each following their specialized schedules. Rex only remembers his own when Dent sets off another round of jeers by congratulating him on being tapped for the command track. The training block between first meal and second is comprised of strategy drills—troop positions, battle tactics, even ship-based maneuvers.

Basic skills that they, as future captains and commanders, would need to have mastered by the time the Jedi finally come collect their army. Having actually _been_ a captain in the war for the last couple years, Rex blows through every exercise. Each scenario the Longneck instructor sets out for them, he examines it meticulously before submitting a solution. It doesn’t occur to him until the instructor remarks upon Rex’s sudden and vast improvement that he should have toned it down, but it’s not in his—or any brother’s—nature to hold back, so he straightens up that much more and says that he’s been training with an older cadet.

Which is… _technically_ true.

The Longnecks buy it easy enough, so he just keeps his head down and continues his work until the midday meal-call sounds. He files out the door with his brothers and listens to Jape and Dawn argue back and forth from either side of him about the best way to break through a planetary blockade. Rex doesn’t bother chiming in because his General’s method was to, against _explicit_ orders, engage the blockade, attack the Separatist capital ship with a single cloaked Corvette meant for a damned _mercy_ mission, and then destroy said capital ship with nothing more than sheer determination and a spine of solid durasteel _._

The two keep up the debate until they reach the mess, at which point most of the group disperses to sit with their batchmates. Rex reflexively checks each brother in their whites for 212th gold as he collects his rations. A moment later, it hits him that Cody won't be _wearing_ 212th gold. It doesn't exist yet.

He gives his head a little shake as he takes a seat next to Dent and tries to remember what Cody will be like now. A little less sure of himself with no combat experience beyond simulations? A little more snappish, having to deal with accelerated puberty? Probably. But was he always so wry, or did that come later, with the war and General Kenobi? Rex tries to remember, staring down at his nutrient paste, and finds that he can't.

Neither can he remember if he knew Jesse, Hardcase, or Kix before the 501st. Fives didn't—hadn’t? won't?—graduate from cadet-training until after the start of the war, so he can't get to the trouble-making ARC. Tup and Dogma weren’t precisely shinies touching down on Umbara, but they were hardly veterans, so there’s entire light-years between Rex’s level of development and theirs now. No convenient excuse to seek them out.

Torrent is scattered across the breadth and width of Tipoca City, and that's the _best_ -case scenario. It assumes they were all decanted and trained here, instead of other facilities, other cities. The only connection he has to his men is Cody, and he doesn't even know where the Sith-fripping bastard _is_ —

An elbow from Dent jostles Rex out of his spiralling thoughts. He turns to glare at the brawler, but pulls up when he sees Dent’s grin and follows his line of sight. Standing a few yards away from their section is a brother with regulation hair and spit-shined whites; not a single thing about him stands out but the intensity of his gaze and the half-smile curling his lips. When he sees that he's been spotted, the brother grins.

On his other side, Byte joins Dent in trying to cave Rex’s ribs in as the unknown brother strolls up to their section, a confident roll in his gait. “Hey there, old boy,” the brother drawls, and Rex’s tense posture relaxes so fast he almost slumps in his seat. “You ready to get to work?”

_Cody._

\- - -

The midday meal ends and Rex collects a truly _tiny_ set of whites from the distribution line, then follows Cody to the mats he'd reserved. Bastard had somehow managed to secure a small, private training room and Rex raises an eyebrow at him when they move away from the open floor. Cody, never _not_ a little shit, just raises one back and gestures for him to go inside.

Standing together in a loose, nervous-looking circle are three cadets who look to be at least one stage of development behind himself, and two behind Cody. It isn't easy to tell Standard ages with _vod’ike,_  their accelerated growth cycles being what they are. They all separate and stand at attention when they notice Rex and Cody’s entrance.

“As you were,” Cody says as he keys the door closed. Then, thrown over his shoulder as he slices the lock shut: “Found these for you, old boy.”

Rex blinks and takes a closer look at the one who looks to be the oldest, developmentally speaking, and sees—“Jesse!”

As one, the trio relaxes considerably, and Jesse gives Rex a relieved kind of head-bob. Now that he knows _who_ he's looking at, Rex can see Kix in the cast of the middle cadet’s eyes, and can definitely see Hardcase in the shape of the youngest’s wide grin. (It’s a punch to the gut to see it again, but a better kind than the ones of the last few days.)

He greets them too and the relief that fills the room is palpable. Rex looks at Cody with what's probably the most pathetically hopeful expression ever to grace Jango Fett’s face. “We all know, then? We all remember?”

Everyone else in the room nods and makes some kind of noise of assent. Rex feels a little weak at the knees and allows himself to slide down the wall. They remember. He's not alone. Not like he'd worried he might be, back in the suffocating quiet of his sleeping pod. He can’t stand the thought of being alone.

“And the others? Fives, Tup”—he has to ask, he _deserves_ to be asked after—“Dogma?” Rex turns his head up toward Cody. “Anyone from 212?”

Cody sighs, shakes his head, shrugs. “Haven't found record of any of my boys here in Tipoca. Only found these clowns”—the trio hoots and boos, probably proving Cody’s point—“because I tripped over them slicing into the system at the same time. Managed to convince the Longnecks that giving younger cadets extra training would be good for the future chain of command.”

Another round of jeers follows and Rex finally cracks something like a smile and climbs back to his feet. He looks over at his men. “The others?”

“Hardcase has an in with Fives in Domino Squad,” Jesse says, stepping forward. He and Kix haven’t stopped touching some part of the crazy, grinning bastard since Rex has been in the room. He understands the feeling. “I've heard Tup and Dogma both mention decanting and training in Tipoca, but I don't think any of the other boys did. Looks like we're on our own.”

Rex sighs and nods. “Understood, Lieutenant, do what you can. Until then…” He grins at the now-younger cadets. “Who wants to run some drills?”

Their groans are music to his ears.

\- - -

Aching pleasantly, Rex nods to the others as they all split up for the end-of-day meal. The drills he'd set them were meant for the veteran soldiers that they all _had_ been, not the soft cadets they are _now._ It was an interesting experiment, watching them all stumble through movements their minds told them they could complete with ease, but that their bodies _insisted_ were unfamiliar.

Cody had performed best out of all of them, but his ‘new’ body was also closest to his ‘old’ one. Hardcase has yet to stop calling him a cheater for it—loudly—under his breath. The Marshal Commander just smirks at them all as he strolls off and Rex watches him go, wishing he'd stay. Wishing _someone_ would stay. There's a table full of ghosts waiting to hear what had happened during the training and Rex doesn't know what to tell them. Doesn't know how to talk to these boys he'd grown up with, who'd never had a chance to become men. It makes his skin crawl with guilt that even _he_ knows is misplaced. Still—

“Oi, Seven!” Target’s ghost calls from their table. “C’mon, brother, _spill!”_

—he supposes he’ll have to _figure out_ how to talk them one way or another.

\- - -

The second day is a more familiar speed.

By the time morning meal rolls around the next day, Rex feels like Hardcase must with a bad case of downtime jitters. Once the strategy training block ends, probably the only thing that saves him from a round of reconditioning is the sound of a fairly large explosion.

His batchmates go quiet and still around him, caught up in the ripple of unease that spreads throughout the meal tables. This was, in the minds of the cadets, a New Thing—and New Things rarely meant anything good. Monitor droids buzz and hover as they always did, unaffected, but two of the Longnecks murmur to each other quietly before gliding out of the room.

Rex remembers an abandoned monastery on Teth (an unshakeable force lifting him off the ground by his throat, a voice in his mind that doesn’t belong) and flashes through the last several days worth of trauma (eyes flaming with insane hatred, twin sabers that should by all rights have been the color of blood), and ducks his head. He's faced far worse than callous Longnecks ever since the war began, and the urge to bare his teeth at them is shockingly intense. The shadowy, childhood terror of reconditioning pales in comparison to the realities of pan-galactic war, one in which everyone loses.

His table of ghosts proves that easily enough.

“That came from the simulation areas,” Byte murmurs, hunched over his nutrient paste, frozen in the act of defending against Snipe’s greedy paws. “Think there was a malfunction?”

The low hum of similar conversations breaking out all around hides Rex’s scoff. Tipoca City had managed to survive everything from Separatist incursion to the Domino Duo at their most unstable; if that explosion had been anything less than premeditated, _calculated_ even, Rex would eat his bucket—

His breath stutters and Rex mentally backtracks, replaying his last thought. Explosion, premeditated, _duo..._   _“Sithspit!”_ Rex is up and out of his seat before the thought really settles into shape, ignoring his batchers’ calls and the faces of unknown brothers rushing past. A monitor droid tries to block his way and Rex barely notices, dropping and sliding beneath its hovering chassis without pause, his mind already mapping out the most efficient route to the holding nearest holding rooms.

A deliberate explosion was impossible to create unnoticed, and destructive aberrant behavior demanded immediate termination and study. It's the only thought going through his mind as he sprints down the corridors. The only reason he doesn't turn and face the set of heavy footfalls behind him is because he recognizes Cody’s gait long before they hit an intersection and he stops Rex with a touch.

“Here, go right,” Cody says, tense but not clipped. He taps the non-standard comm on his left vambrace and explains, “He was taken to the holds closer to the surgery center, ‘stead of the ones by the simulators. Nala Se’s orders.”

Rex can feel a growl building in his throat, but he grits his teeth and nods. They take off again and Cody lets him take point without protest, just half a step behind as they dodge and weave through whatever hall traffic bars their way. Skidding around the last corner, Rex almost trips across a damned crowd of _vod’ike_ huddled in front of the holding cell door, all clustered around the shiny little cadet-Jesse and his slicing equipment.

There’s a high-pitched chorus of “sirs” and Cody seamlessly moves forward to take over the task of slicing the door. Rex claps Jesse on the back and examines the unfamiliar cadets: one has a head of unruly brown curls caught up in a valiant attempt to be slicked back and meets his gaze evenly, another has a standard buzzcut and a thousand-meter stare, and the third is gazing past all of them like his whole world is just beyond that door.

As Rex understood their relationship, it pretty much is.

“Tup, Dogma,” Rex addresses the first two of the new trio, “have you found anyone else aware like we are? Batchers, brothers—frip it, _cousins—_ anyone?”

Brushing an errant curl off his forehead, Tup shakes his head and glances worriedly at Dogma. “No, sir,” he says, stepping forward to half-shield Dogma. “My batchers didn’t give any indication that anything was abnormal, and everyone in my training blocks seemed to be carrying on like typical cadets.” Tup catches himself before turning to look at Dogma again, so small and fragile-looking, but still looks unusually perturbed as he takes another step and continues, in a low undertone, “Dogma… never got on much with his batchers. They didn’t report him for aberrant behavior, but he’s been mostly unresponsive so far, and someone must have noticed. One of the minders was just coming over to question him, maybe take him for reconditioning, when the explosion went off. They got spooked, so I grabbed him and took off. Ran into Hardcase on the way and we all met up here.”

Tup nods at the door that, from Cody’s and Jesse’s mutterings, is nearly open. “He’s in there, went off during a sim and the explosion he managed to set off took out most of the practice droids, put their sergeant in medical with second-degree burns. Fives is going mental about it, kept saying he should’ve looked harder for him.”

“He was there!” Fives burst out, and Rex turned to meet his feverish gaze. He doesn’t look like the battle-hardened ARC, ready to disobey orders from a madman; he looks like a frightened kid, desperate for someone to reach out and help him. “He was—he was _there_ and then he was _gone,_ and then—and then we woke up _here_ but he. He was different, quiet, he didn’t _echo,_ and then we went out in that training sim and he—”

Fives closes his eyes and takes a shuddering breath. When he opens them again, Rex can feel the cadet-ARC’s horror like it’s his own. “He flipped, suddenly he was shouting and shooting at _everything,_ and I tried to get close but he called me—he said I was just another _lie,_ and he grabbed one of the blasters and just took off. He managed to get up onto one of the battlements, still can’t figure out _how,_ and he—he did _something_ and it just _exploded,_ and I-I didn’t, I _couldn’t—_ ”

“Easy, brother,” Rex soothes, moving to pull the ARC close. Fives’ head brushes the bottom of Rex’s chin and he holds on with every ounce of strength he has in his little cadet body, quaking with the suppressed sobs. “Easy, _easy,_ you did everything you could. We’ll take it from here, alright? Fives,” he says, pulling away just slightly to meet his eyes, “Cody and I will take it from here, okay? Just—just focus on helping Echo once we get him out.”

He looks over to Tup and jerks his head slightly at Hardcase and Kix, keeping watch for incoming hostiles. “You three figure out an exit strategy. As soon as we grab him, we’re leaving.”

Tup, just barely clearing Rex’s shoulders, straightens and salutes before dragging Dogma over to the others and beginning to confer. He watches them for a moment—one of Tup’s arms wrapped firmly around an even-smaller Dogma’s waist and the other gripping Hardcase’s elbow with a durasteel grip—before Jesse lets out a triumphant “Aha!” and he rushes over to the door, gently pulling Fives along with him. Cody nods as they enter, clearly keeping his own watch now that the door is open, and Jesse gives Fives’ shoulder a passing squeeze before doing the same.

The room is dark, edged in strips of light that don’t do _shavit_ for actual visibility, and in the center is a heartbreakingly small figure rendered almost immobile on a hovering gurney. Straps hold him down at shoulders, wrists, and ankles, but his head jerks listlessly from side to side. Unintelligible muttering covers the hum of medical equipment and Rex barely takes two steps into the room before Fives lets out a broken cry of _“Echo!”_ and rushes forward.

Rex approaches more cautiously, keeping an ear trained for the sound of intruders on their rescue, and watches Fives furiously tear at his brother’s bindings. Echo doesn’t seem to be fully cognizant, but Fives unties him and pulls him up into a sitting position, trying to catch his eyes and apologizing with every breath, just a constant stream of, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m s-so sorry Echo, please forgive me, I’m so sorry, I should’ve looked for you, Echo, Echo, I’m s-sorry…”

He gets closer and in the dim lighting finally catches a glimpse of their lost Domino. The right side of his face is covered in scrapes and burns, nominally treated, and what Rex can see of his body is in a similar state. Not ideal, but a damn sight better than he was expecting for a cadet who’d deliberately tried to blow himself to hells. And as the seconds tick by and Fives voice cracks and breaks but keeps up, a flicker of life appears behind Echo’s eyes.

“F-Fives?” The rasp is painful to hear, his throat obviously damaged just as much as his spirit. “Are you—are you real? Are you—no—can’t be— _stupid._ Too small, already happened, did this before…”

“Echo, _Echo,_ I promise it’s me, I _promise_ —”

A hiss of _“Incoming!”_ doesn’t make Fives so much as twitch but Rex darts forward and scoops Echo up as best he can. He staggers under the weight, forgetting that being seven and a half isn’t anywhere close to being twelve, and hands half of him over to Fives so that his arms are slung across their shoulders and his feet barely brush the floor. They carry him out and move as fast as they can down the corridor, close on Kix and Jesse’s heels while Cody seals the door behind them, Hardcase follows them closely to provide support, and Tup and Dogma bring up the rear.

The voices carry as they turn the corner. Rex only vaguely recognizes the voice of one Kaminoan, feels a nostalgic flash of fondness for the drill sergeant they’re speaking to, and then a deep-seated horror as a third voice makes itself known. Someone had the spine to call in Jango _fripping_ Fett about a malfunctioning clone and Rex felt, very keenly, that if they didn’t make it off Kamino in _minutes,_  they wouldn’t be making it off at all.

\- - -

 _“This is your plan?”_ Rex hisses disbelievingly, only to be silenced by a chorus of emphatic shushes. He peeks around the corner again, just to confirm it, before letting his head thunk back against the wall. “I can’t believe you authorized this,” he mutters, shooting a betrayed glare at Cody, who just shrugs.

“Shouldn’t be surprised by anything your boy here comes up with,” he replies amiably, leaning over to pound Hardcase on the back. Like a particularly good-humored sponge, Hardcase seems to be soaking up the affection and self-reassurance that the group can’t help but shower him with, and clearly Cody is no different from the rest of them. “And I agreed with their line of thinking. It’ll be the last place anyone thinks to check.”

Rex covers his face. “We’re going to be murdered in our beds,” he groans into his hands, horrified at the entire prospect. “Mark my words: we might get _away,_  but we’ll never get _away with it.”_

“Ah, we’re already breaking every reg in the manual anyways,” Jesse pipes up from his position as self-appointed sentry at the back of the group. “Why not add a little grand theft astro into the mix? Can’t hardly hurt at this point.”

“Of course _you’d_ think that,” Kix mutters, rolling his eyes while he dabs bacta that he must’ve swiped at some point onto Echo’s more serious wounds. “‘Go big or go to hell’ is practically your life’s motto.”

Shaking his head and straightening up, Rex looks at Cody. “You _know_ it’s not the Kaminoans I’m worried about,” he says, and sees something harden in his brother’s eyes. “If we do this, _he’ll_ come after us. Man’s got an ego the size of Rishi Maze, he’ll _have_ to.”

Jesse hands sentry-duty over to Tup just so he can go bicker with Kix without compromising security. Hardcase seems to be swaying encouragingly from side to side in front of Dogma, hoping to kickstart that self-soothing motion their youngest sometimes did. Fives, ordered quiet some minutes ago, stares and stares at his hands like they’ve betrayed him. And Cody casts his gaze over all of them with an unreadable expression.

“… no, no regs,” a voice croaks from somewhere around waist-level. Everyone quiets and turns to look at Echo, climbing shakily to his feet. “No regs. Against leaving.” He takes a deep breath, and Rex isn’t the only one to take a step forward when he wavers, but Fives is there like he never left and never will. “CO gives the order, and we go.”

Rex doesn't see Echo’s words as what they are—as a _challenge_ —until Cody blinks first. “There you go, old boy,” he says, smiling big and bright, like he's flashing blood on his teeth. “ARC trooper knows best, yeah?”

Cody slants his gaze to the side but Rex doesn't bother to follow his line of sight, already aware.

 _“Argh,”_ he says emphatically, just to get the point across, before, “Fine. Fine! Let's—let's just— _argh!_ ” A deep, deep breath, and then… “Let's go steal _Slave I_.”

He just really, truly, has no words for how poorly this will turn out.

Rex thinks it repeatedly as they move at a fast clip down the last hallway, out into the pelting Kamino rains, and across the landing pad. _Slave I,_ christened so for reasons that Rex adamantly refuses to consider in-depth, is an unholy marriage of firepower, paranoia, and inanimate rage—if ever there was a starship _angry_ about being stolen, it was _Slave I._

Booby-trapped to every Corellian hell and back, it takes the combined skills of all of them, plus an _obscene_ amount of luck, to slice their way into the damn thing and survive the encounter. If Rex was as superstitious as, say, _Tup,_  he might think that Fett had magically imbued the ship with part of his soul and spend half the time convinced that the man’s ghost would spontaneously manifest and scare them away. As it is, he has to smack Tup upside his curly little head twice throughout the proceedings to stop him from spooking Hardcase too badly.

“Everyone strap in,” Rex calls as they _finally_ disarm the last of the nasty surprises concealed inside, wind whipping the freezing rain into everyone else’s faces, and they quickly file into the galaxy’s least hospitable starship. It’s a suffocatingly tight fit, tiny and deadly— _"Just like us,”_ Hardcase insists as they cram themselves into whatever corner they can each find. Cody is too busy firing up the engines and initializing flight protocols to join in the subsequent dogpile, but he’s with them in spirit.

They assign Jesse the task of disabling any flight and satellite transponders onboard before liftoff, Tup following at a sedate pace to pick up whatever he can; by the time they shout an all-clear, Rex is almost vibrating with his need to get _away, away, away_ and Cody isn’t much better. The first curious Space Control com rolls in as they hit atmo and they both lunge to shut it down before the holo pops up.

Cody’s knuckles go white on the controls as more and more messages flood the com, ranging from indignant to furious as the minutes tick by. They break atmo just as the flood ceases, ending with just one single line of text, like a parting shot:

_Nowhere far enough to run that I can’t find you._

“Brilliant fripping insight, that,” Cody mutters, savagely swiping the message away to input a set of coordinates into the flight computer. The others hunker down about as far away from the cockpit as they can manage, a low drone of voices starting up as they enter hyperspace and get the frip away from Kamino. One lone set of footsteps approaches, though.

Jesse, now third-in-command with Rex’s sudden demotion of ambiguous permanence to XO, barely announces himself with a casual “Sirs” before bending to examine their destination. “Dare I ask, what the kark is in the Sertar sector?” he says, glancing dubiously between them.

They exchange a look and Rex, really, does not want to keep secrets after all of, well, everything. Cody shrugs his agreement, and Rex follows suit with a tiny smirk, turns back to Jesse, and just says, “Pirates, lieutenant.”

**Author's Note:**

> additional thank-you to charity_angel for allowing me to use 756 Squad from "A Rex By Any Other Name...": eagle-eyed readers may recognize Lingo (CT-7560) from "Haat Verd" but Dent (CT-7561, Target (CT-7563), Snipe (CT-7564), and Byte (CT-7568) are also from the fabulous Named Squad!
> 
> ngl i almost kept "let's go steal slave i" as the original line, which was, of course, "let's go steal a starship!" because leverage is awesome.
> 
> also, you know that Gotta Bounce That Leg™ adhd feel? yeah no one can tell me that calling it "downtime jitters" isn't a _fantastic_ idea, i'm so proud, it took me like two days to come up with that.
> 
> hope everyone's voices sounded okay, and for the great visual of it, the approximate physical ages of everyone are: cody 17, rex 16, jesse kix and hardcase 15, fives and echo 14, tup 13, and dogma 12.
> 
> aaaaaaand pretty much anything related to this au is and will be archived @bitty-clone-shenanigans on tumblr.
> 
> edit: shoutout to Guardian_Of_Hope as we both have rex and co. going all grand theft astro on jango's ride! it wasn't intentional but while i've been planning this basically since i first had the bitty!clones idea, i don't remember if Temporal Shenanigans was posted before, after, or around the same time, so i very well might have been inspired by everyone living to give jango fett a hard time


End file.
